The Great Mumbai Marathon..

Well the great Mumbai marathon is here. It was a little scary at first, to see people with hairy legs haring down streets in the early morning and evenings, till I saw the hoardings closely. It was not a new Mutual Fund, but the old Marathon Run being publicized. A lot of people are expected to run, some for charity, some for fun, some just because they got nothing better to do on a Sunday morning.

I got an invite from a person who heads one of the good NGOs in Mumbai. She gave me a form and asked me to run for her cause. Well.. I have nothing better to do on a Sunday, so signed up.

It has three parts, the dream run, the half and for the Kenyans, the full marathon. With a lot of side runs, like the senior marathon and the wheel chair marathon. After serious deliberation, I ruled out the senior marathon (fifteen gray hairs apparently do not qualify you) and the wheel chair one (swivel chairs do not count) which left me with the dream run, the half and the full.

Now, at twenty four, weighing in just 80 kilos, 20km is not really that long to run. Right? Well, since thats usually like ten times my daily commute to office (which usually is by the bus, the most empty one) I decided on the dream run.

Six kilometers. Should be a piece of cake. A walk in the park and all that. So decided to do just that. Walk in the park that is, not run six kilometers.

Beautiful morning and great weather outside. People walking the dogs, pretty young things in pretty small shorts running up and down the track. While it was raising my heart rate, conventional wisdom demanded that heart rate increase be independent of pretty young things and dependent on the number of times my feet left the ground, while propelling my body in the forward direction against the wind and the gravity. Started off. Marked the route and number of laps required for the dream run. And did just that. Ran. Not walked in the park.

After exactly three minutes my heart rate was up in the thousands, could hear the ocean in my ears. Eye sight blurring, lungs bursting and all the other scary symptoms usually associated with the end of your current incarnation on this great planet. By now was being over taken left right and sometimes center too. By all the pretty young things, who had a strange set to their features, that looked depressingly like a smirk.

Decided right there and then, that I will train. I can be fit too and win this silly run. Sat down and Googled the whole training thing. Got a schedule and got to work. Heres what I ended up with.

Rule 1. No bad habits.

I have quit smoking. The whole lot. Its easy to do, when all you do is inhale what others spew at you. So, from today onwards no more movies in which actors smoke. Any tele-serial in which a person is smoking is a strict no-no. I even do not watch the reruns of F1 because of the Marlboro on the Ferraris. I even avert my eyes when I pass the neighbourhood paan wallah. I have stopped breathing in the vicinity of traffic signals and other polluting areas of the city. I feel heady and nice. Healthier actually. There is a vague feeling of euphoria even. (My killjoy doctor of a dad says, that just must be the oxygen deprivation kicking in. Apparently there's even a term for it, asphyxiation or something).

I have quit drinking. No more ads of "Mera No.1" soda, water or any of that. No more golf accessories, music Cds or anyother such items. I turn the TV off or change the channel when these ads play. I do not watch movies in which people are drinking. No more going past bars or wineshops during the commute to work. (Mighty hard to do in Mumbai nowadays, I counted nine on my regular route and fifteen on my irregular route.) Since that was getting a little difficult, I jog past them, holding my breath to avoid imbibing even the recirculated air, rich in breathed out alcohol that floats out of these places.

No more snacks and only a healthy diet. So, no more MacD ads, no thirty minutes toh free ads or Pizza huts. I don't even watch people eat on the TV even, esp if they are having something really sinful, like chocolate or cake. No more cooking shows, no Floyd's India or Tarla Dalal or anything.
Every evening I go to the nearest Nature's basket shop and stare at all the fruits and vegetables.I quiz the poor sales teams on the nutritional values of each of the healthy colorful looking produce on sale. Being so well trained and courteous, they respond faithfully and honestly to each question, each day, even though I just buy the peanuts and move on.

Rule no 2. Work out.

Every day I go to the gym. I watch these well built muscle men exercise. They lift weights and pull on machines. I watch closely and learn to visualize. I hit on this technique quite accidentally while watching Discovery Science and Living channel, late one night. It seems that the human mind is a wonderful and complex thing. Visualizing your workout increases your burn rate by as much as two and half percentage points, rather than plain exercising. I can actually visualize my muscles getting leaner and meaner. By closing my eyes and concentrating hard, I can actually visualize my calories burning. I make faces in front of the mirrors and flex my now visualized taut muscles to measure my growth.

I watch Aastha TV. Baba Ramdev the great Indian yogic, helps me visualize the various Indian contortions to increase my flexibility, boost my immune system, make me basically invincible to the attacks of Dengue, Malaria, Aids, Cancer, Cataracts, loss of hearing, loss of appetite, gain of appetite, loss of hair, gain of hair in cosmetically unappealing places , the whole shebang. An hour of this really leaves me rejuvenated and strangely apprehensive of visualizing. (Usually, I ended up visualizing, where does all his stuff go, you know, when he knots and twists. Maybe the technique involves less imagination and more visualization. Should write to the learned American scholars on this.)

Rule 3. Improve your technique.

I decided, my technique needs a workout too. So, off again to Discovery Science and living. I surfed all night to watch Cheetahs in action. I soaked up their feline grace, watched bio-mechanical engineers create computer models of their movements, the works. Then I realized that this was a marathon and not a sprint race. So, had to rewind and unlearn all the stuff that I had spent so much time and sweat on.

Then came the hard part, who do I model myself upon? The Gazelle, the bison or the elephants? All these creatures are renowned long distance runners. The gazelle was eliminated because, all the usual videos ended it being eaten by the cheetah. The bison was a close runner up, but when I saw a croc making a lunch of it, I thought I needed something better. The winner then, was the elephant.

I was actually pretty partial to it from the start. It bears a close resemblance to one of our family deities. Its got a presence and it can outrun a man on any given Sunday. That is, if the man's fool enough to challenge an elephant to a marathon (or anything) on a Sunday. Watching closely, I realized a few tips I could use:

Tip1: Get a Mud bath. Water is passe. Mud seems to help. Protects you from the heat and the cold. Aliens intent on eating you cannot find you with their infra red sensors (Remember Arnold in the "Predator"?). Fleas and mosquitoes cannot bite ( so no dengue and malaria). Immediate benefit would be that, no one in his / her right mind, would want to run next to me when I am naked and just out of a mud bath. That should surely give me the edge I need.

Tip2: Bellow loudly. Being next to a being making strange noises, moving it's nose up and down seems to most people an extremely uncomfortable situation.

Tip3: Get a whole gang of similarly well endowed and built people to choose you as a leader and run behind you. Do I need to elaborate? The hard part is convincing them to get a mud bath too.
(How do you get a whole lot of fat people take a mud bath, singly or in batches? The logistics are getting me down.)

Well, I got the first two down pat, am working hard on the third one. Once I get that done, I am thinking, I will pretty much be unbeatable.

Mumbai Marathon, here we come. Hope all you people will join us. I even have a name for the Charity that we are going to endorse: "Save the Vibhu Fund"!

Family and Indian Women.

Have you ever noticed some families that always carry their home wherever they seem to travel. In buses, trains and stations you can see them occupy spaces with complete familiarity and comfort. It seems like they own them and you feel like you are intruding in their private space.

This is an incident of one such family. It was thankfully not a very large family, actually it was the epitome of a nuclear family, make that a Hydrogen Molecule family, what with just two members, but am rambling now.

I was traveling on the Matsyagandha Express from LTT (Kurla Terminus for the uninitiated and the initiated too!) to my native place in southern Karnataka, Udupi. This train runs along one of the most scenic rail routes in India, the Konkan coast. It leaves Mumbai and then heads towards Goa, finally crossing Karnataka to enter Kerala. I am not rambling now, this has a purpose.

It was a 3AC coach, but, the train was only marginally full. We had the coupe to ourselves. By we, I mean, I and the H2 molecule family. It was an old couple. Just past their middle age and already they seemed to have celebrated their marriages' golden jubilee celebration. They were going back to their house in Kerala after visiting their children in Mumbai.

The journey went on, with small talk between me and the old guy. As with all train chats, it died out when I got out my book and pretended to read. They did not talk much amongst each other. The old guy started leafing through a mag and the lady looking out of the window and 'tsk'ing at pretty young things going to Goa, in pretty small dresses.

Evening wore on. I was just lounging about trying to get the PYT's to talk to me while suddenly I hear a great snap and feel a bustle in my coupe. I turn around to see what can only be called a symphony in motion. Zen like in its understanding of minds.

The side table was up and about. The lady then very silently reached in to her bag and got a bottle filled with amber liquid. Then she takes out a steel tumbler, exactly like the one in which my Granny feeds me (tries to, at least) milk. Then very expertly she draws a measure from the bottle. One can actually feel the great vernier caliper in her brain sliding the rule to the millimeter. With fluidity of motion, that could be envied by any barkeep in our great country she stopped pouring, without spilling a single drop, re-capped the bottle and whisked it in to her bag again. This must have taken about 30 seconds and no words.

The old guy looks at her,the glass and then takes it. Makes a face at it and puts it to his lips and gulps it down neat. Then he starts shaking his head violently from left to right all the while "blrring" with his tongue. By now, I was frankly staring. " Brandy" He said to me. "For my digestion." While the old lady was already making other arrangements.

A different bag this time. One with gleaming steel containers. One opens to reveal a whole fish, fried Kerala style, another opens to fish pieces in curry again kerala style, while the third has mounds of plain, steamed rice. With dexterity of long practice, she lays the paper plates out and they guy starts eating with gusto. She looks on to see if he needs anything.

After about a couple of mouthfuls, he looks up and there is a glass of water waiting for him in her hand. He takes a sip and hands it back. In all this while, the lady does not seem to take a single bite. Fish and rice demolished. The guy raises his hands for the plates to be picked up and a dollop of soap to be dropped in his palm. Off he goes to wash his hands.

In his absence, the lady has cleared the table. Pulled the bunks (with my gallant help, if I may add) and laid the bedclothes on them. The old guy comes back and then he sits on my bunk. The lady then hands him his medicines and another glass of water. He makes a face and shoves these down his throat.

I am waiting for the lady to have dinner, so I asked her, aren't you having anything? The old guy says, " She is a vegetarian, can't stand fish. As I can only eat fish on train journeys, she will probably eat when she gets home."

By this time they were looking very pointedly at my unmade bunk and the bed clothes that were lying untouched at the bottom. Took the hint and made my bunk. Before I had laid out my pillow and removed my shoes, the lights were off. I laid myself out in the dark, thinking, must be only in India.

My ode goes to all the ladies who can make their husband's drink, dinner, medication and bed all in the moving trains that seem to carry so many of us from one home to another. Never had I ever imagined that the journey itself could be like one long passageway that connects one wing to the other.